omeone unfamiliar with women's basketball might never have heard the name Goestenkors. This would be forgivable: Goestenkors is an unusual name, German and long and pronounced a bit differently (guess-ten-course) from the way it appears. And it would be understandable, given that the coach has risen so rapidly to the top that one might have seen just a blue streak of success.

But in fact the name Goestenkors has become nearly as Duke as its three-syllable, Polish counterpart, having attained single-letter status--she is Coach G to players and fans--and the sort of emblazoned permanence that is the result of history-making achievement. Since Gail Goestenkors' arrival eleven years ago, Duke women's basketball has achieved a number of firsts: appearances in the Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight, Final Four, and national championship games; an ACC title; and a sellout crowd in Cameron Indoor Stadium.

The 2003 Naismith Coach of the Year would be the very last, though, to say that she is satisfied with it all. Upon their return from Atlanta and a loss to Tennessee in the Final Four, Coach G and team were welcomed home in Cameron. They wore black warm-ups and moved slowly through the gym, taking the stage without a word or a wave. They seemed rather irritated, as though they had been dispossessed of a certain right and were impatient to take back what was theirs. President Nannerl O. Keohane read the year's report card: "number 1 or 2 the entire season, ACC tournament and regular season champs, broke or tied twenty-three team records and twenty individual records, Duke's first-ever first-team Associated Press Player of the Year selection in Alana Beard--wow, what a year."

After Keohane's introduction, Goestenkors addressed the crowd. "How many teams can go to the Final Four and come back angry?" she asked. The crowd, families of young parents and toddlers, professors, and students, whooped and hollered, but Goestenkors managed just a grin. She was grateful for the support, she said, but the pain was difficult to hide.

Goestenkors' office is on the third floor of the Schwartz-Butters Building. Trophies and signed basketballs crowd the top of a bookshelf and large framed pictures of past years' teams cover the walls. The room is immaculate except for a desk cluttered with scouting reports and a box of strawberry Pop Tarts. In one cabinet sits a stack of books typically assigned to players before the season begins.

Junior Iciss Tillis found Maya Angelou's Even The Stars Look Lonesome in front of her locker after practice. "She doesn't tell you why she's giving you the book. She just does," says Tillis. "She's got a game plan. If you follow her lead, if you go by her plan, you win."

Goestenkors is always reading something, usually a self-help book or a book on strategy by another coach, "to get in their heads," she says. "I minored in psychology, so I'm very into that component of coaching." In front of the desk, there is a couch that Goestenkors never rests on and behind it a wall-length window with a splendid view of K-ville. "It's going to be a good while with the students," she says, looking out over the lawn. "It's going to take until the women are dunking for them to come out like they do for the men, I think. That's very exciting for the students, you know. They like to see the dunks on the Sports Center highlights."